10/18/11 Class notes

Assignment: Make a blog entry on the subject of middles.  Put the story or ritual we have chosen for Thursday.  Research the subject of middles. 

Middles: most teachers deal with the moving of the gods from to the world of the heroes.  Mostly deals with the subject of battle: Achiles. 

Athena: jumped out of Zeus’ head.  Dionysus came from his thigh.  Athena mates with a mortal and she gives birth to Achiles. 

Wars happen to start over the trivial things (pig stuck in the fence).

Big problem in Greek mythology: how am I going to stop my children from overcoming me?  Arestes: How do we get rid of the cyclical violence?  (All the great stories are family stories ex: Hatfield-McCoy Feud).  Arestes comes home to kill his mother because of the family-murder cycle and he does not want to but he has to. 

·      If you killed your mother, you will be faced with the Erinyes: Chthonic (of or related to the underworld) deities of vengeance.  They were born from the drops of Uranus’ blood after Cronus castrated him.  Meanwhile, Aphrodite was born from the crests of sea foam.  The Erinyes are vile and disgusting women. 

Arrestees is plagued by Erinyes.  Etiology: the origin of the modern judicial system.  Arrestees was guilty of killing his mom, but Apollo said that it was not that serious of a crime.  Apollo agrued that the man is the important one because the men provide the seed.   Athena thought that this was relevant because she was a daddy’s girl. 

·      Daddy’s girl.  Archetype-the original pattern or model; a prototype. 

Arrestees was aquitted from the crime of matricide.  The western political system is rooted in patriarch. 

Ask your Senator.  Senator comes from the Latin word Senex: The wise old man or the impotent old man.   

           

Zeus: Zeus also had to overcome cyclical things.  Zeus and Athena do not like circles; they like linear things.  Zeus puts an end to the cyclical business.  He ate their mother.  He had an alliance with a woman named Metis: She was the spouse of Zeus and the mother of Athena.  Zeus ate the mother and ingested wisdom.  Used thoughtfulness and the power of the mind to put an end of the cyclicalism through the adjudication of the court of law. 

Zeus discovered the power of persuasion, wisdom, thought, and cunning; rather than power, like his father. 

Rituals: Things that are done and we do not know why we do them. 

James Joyce: Ulysses.  Ulysses is almost the opposite of Achilles.  Leopold Bloom is anything but Ulysses.  But it is like finding Oz in Bozeman.  Joyce was trying to find a hero for the modern world.  He took his model from Odysseus.  We are all heroes and everyday of our lives is a heroic venture.  Most of our lives are spent with remedial concerns.  Eternal return. 

This Eternal return can also be seen in the film Groundhog’s Day.

OCD: everything has to be done has to be a certain way. 

Eliada: Rituals. 

·      The Eleusinian Mysteries:  What is the real meaning or purpose for these things that we have been doing all our life? 

·      Temenos: a a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary, holy grove or holy precinct.  This is where the ritual goes on. 

·      Of all the mysteries, these Eleusinian mysteries were held to be the greatest of mysteries.  Something was seen, something was said, and something was done.  What was seen was what made everything work. 

·      Outside of the Temenos, when the thing is said, seen, and done, it is life-transforming. 

Here is the myth that I chose to recite:

Mircea Eliade "From Primitives to Zen":

RAIN-MAKING

AUSTRALIA

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It is universally believed by the tribes of the Karamundi nation, Of the Darling River, that rain can be brought down by the following ceremony. A vein in the arm of one of the men is opened and the blood allowed to drop into a piece of hollow bark until there is a little pool. Into this is put a quantity of gypsum, ground fine, and stirred until it has the consistency of a thick paste. A number of hairs are pulled out of the man's beard and mixed up with this paste, which is then placed between two pieces of bark and put under the surface of the water in some river or lagoon, and kept there by means of pointed stakes driven into the ground. When the mixture is all dissolved away, the blackfellows say that a great cloud will come, bringing rain. From the time that this ceremony takes place until the rain comes, the men are tabooed from their wives, or the charm will be spoiled, and the old men say that if this prohibition were properly respected, rain would come every time that it is done. In a time of drought, when rain is badly wanted, the whole tribe meets and performs this ceremony.